It’s a Rocky Road!

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Call me a marshmallow. I guess I am when it comes to my little furry friends.

Take Rocky, for instance. He’s not even my dog (he belongs to my daughter, pictured left), but the poor little guy is so needy, I can’t help but sympathize. He was recently whining in pain from a slipped disc, so to help immobilize the lesion site, I used my occupational therapy splinting skills to make him a little body brace.

What an ordeal! You just haven’t lived until you’ve made a squirmy 5-lb dog a body brace. And then it never occurred to me to check the placement of the belly straps until he stood pathetically looking up at us in the yard when we told him to go potty. Turns out one of the straps was directly over his little wiener. When we removed it, he went for 30 solid seconds.

Live and learn. That particular problem never came up in my 30+ years of fabricating splints for humans.

I don’t know if it’s a “tiny dog” problem or just Rocky, but the little fellow shivers practically nonstop from October until March. If the temp dips below 65, he quivers like a tower of Jello. We’ve taken to heating up a beanbag and slipping it under the blanket in his doggie bed. If we forget, he stands beside the bed shaking from head to tail like his paw is stuck in the electrical outlet, giving us the puppy-dog eyes until we get up and pop the thing in the microwave.

The other day I got home around noon and walked into the bedroom. I noticed the electric blanket light beaming from my bedside stand, so I went over to turn it off., My husband Chuck, who isn’t exactly known for his canine affinities, popped up behind me, saying, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, I must have left the electric blanket on this morning,” I replied. “I’m just turning it off.”

“No, don’t do that,” he said, looking sheepish.

It was then I noticed a small lump beneath the bed covers. The lump moved. For heaven’s sake – the man who outwardly had little sympathy for four-legged creatures had put the dog in our bed and turned on the electric blanket.

Go figure.

Made me think about the way God treats me – I’m so needy and dependant on his sympathy to get by day to day. He splints my boo-boos, cleans up after my mistakes, and when I turn my poor pathetic puppy-dog eyes upward and beg for his mercy, He’s more than happy to take me into His bed and turn up the heat.

I couldn’t be more thankful for His traveling mercies on my own Rocky Road!